Book Review: Privacy Revisited: A Global Perspective on the Right to Be Left Alone

Ronald J Krotoszynski, Jr, Privacy Revisited: A Global Perspective on the Right to Be Left Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) 292 pages.

Author: Chris DL Hunt

Excerpt

Privacy Revisited: A Global Perspective on the Right to be Left Alone is an ambitious book. Ronald Krotoszynski surveys the leading privacy cases from the United States, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), giving the reader a bird’s-eye view of each jurisdiction’s privacy jurisprudence. Krotoszynski engages also in comparative legal analysis throughout, drawing to the fore points of both tension and convergence; moreover, the author is careful to situate each jurisdiction in its unique cultural context, demonstrating that different cultural forces continue to exert strong normative influences on each country’s approach to privacy. An additional and important theme running through the book concerns the tension between the right to privacy and to freedom of speech which Krotoszynski revisits in the concluding chapter of this impressive monograph…